Well, as I said in the previous dispatch, not the easiest of nights sleep. Between the five of us who had stayed up at C2 , 3 would go back down to BC, and 2 of us would stay up and work. Despite my poor night (and if anything, to try and improve my acclimatisation), I elected to stay up with one other, whilst the others left our lofty accommodation and headed back down for to enjoy the luxuries of BC. Our job for the day was to try and cut tent platforms and erect tents so that when others got back up here, their job of settling in would be that much easier. We had more or less completely colonised the upper balcony of C2 with the two tents we'd erected the previous day, so the focus of our attention would be the lower one, about 20 down. This required a rather hairy and unprotected traverse across a steep ice slope (with only one ice axe and two tents in my rucksack), as the fixed line which would act as a security handrail was buried in the snow and ice. Once safely across, and perhaps only slightly regretting the boldness of my crossing, I started to hack away at the snow drifts which had obscured what we hoped was a nice wide open platform for a few more tents. Unfortunately, this wasn't to be the case, and we quickly discovered that underneath the snow was sheet ice, which even our sharp ice tools tended to just bounce straight off without making much of a mark. We just about managed to put in one 3 man tent right at the far end of the narrow left, although it's front door did open straight onto the abyss - another several thousand foot drop off the side of the mountain. After 3 hours of hacking with our (now rather blunt) ice axes, we managed to clear a space for another single-skin 2 man tent, but both of us agreed that we certainly wouldn't want to be the ones with the pleasure of that fine accommodation! In the mid afternoon, exhausted from all of our work, we retired to the safety and warmth of our tents to melt more snow and try our best to rehydrate. Having successfully managed to knock back several litres of various tasty drinks (and subsequently filled my pee bottle several times over!), I cooked up my supper (Chicken Tikka with rice) and got into my sleeping bag. Several chapters of my current book succeeded in knocking me out, and other than the occasional requirement to top up (and/or empty) my pee bottle, I had a surprisingly good nights sleep.